The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services has lawmakers, lobbyists and many others scrambling for answers about what he will do if confirmed by the Senate early next year. Although Trump has sent a number of problematic nominees to Congress, no name has angered as many special interest groups as Kennedy. The medical and public health communities, medical insurers and pharmaceutical manufacturers are all angry. Yet Republican senators don’t appear to be, despite Kennedy’s long-standing support for abortion rights, which runs counter to one of the Republican Party’s most hallowed cultural and political positions.

One exception is Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), arguably the most pro-life senator. Unlike many elected Republicans, who vigorously oppose access to abortion in public but made exceptions in their personal lives, Lankford is the real deal. And he also knows that, despite what his co-partisans say, they are more than happy to forget their political positions if it is politically advantageous or if Trump tells them to do so.

I first met with Lankford Monday afternoon to ask about his concerns about Kennedy’s historic support for abortion.

“There are a lot of questions,” Lankford said. “We need to be able to ask and find out what his team would be. So yes, we are already formulating our questions and starting to be able to address them when he comes (for his confirmation hearing).

Lankford added that he “absolutely” needed some commitments from Kennedy to give him a “yes.”

“I mean, where HHS was under the first Trump administration, that would be a minimum standard that we have to have,” he said. “We need the safe civil rights protections that they put in place before, the conscience protections that (current HHS Secretary) Xavier Becerra just took away. The Biden administration has been very aggressive in trying to remove basic conscience protections for individuals.

Lankford was referring to his efforts to provide protections for healthcare workers and insurers who wish to refuse to perform abortions and associated care.

Compare Lankford’s responses with those of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who, in several conversations since Election Day, has reiterated to me that he intends to vote to confirm every Trump nominee.

As Hawley said, he doesn’t worry that Kennedy is out of step with conservatives on abortion policy.

“I would assume he would follow the policies of the first Trump administration as it relates to HHS on life,” Hawley said. “That would be my guess.”

When I asked Hawley if he thought Kennedy was an independent thinker — after all, he’s just changed political parties and run several presidential campaigns in the past year alone — he brushed that aside. question.

“Well, he serves at the pleasure of the president,” he said. “You can’t be an independent thinker within the cabinet. It’s not that job. This job is about serving the administration and I guess that’s why he wants the job. So I think he would support the president’s policies as they were during his first term. Otherwise, I would be surprised.

Beyond these two senators, most of the other senators I spoke with are in wait-and-see mode. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician and another of Congress’ most ardent pro-life Republicans, avoided answering questions about Kennedy and abortion. But he said the following:

Well, I think I need to talk to him first. I have learned in my life as a doctor and senator that you need to talk to the person you are considering before making a decision.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the longest-serving Republican senator, told me he didn’t really understand how much authority Kennedy would have over abortion as one of the system’s top officials. of health of the United States.

“I view abortion as primarily a legislative issue,” Grassley said. “I don’t know what power he would have in this area for me to answer your question.”

When I noted that HHS could issue directives and set certain standards that were not directly within the purview of Congress, he told me to get back with him after Kennedy had a confirmation hearing, the date of which is still undetermined.

For what it’s worth, Grassley used his time during current HHS Secretary Xavier Beccera’s confirmation hearing to ask him about abortion policy. Grassley’s staff also gave former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius advanced warning that she would face questions about abortion policy during her 2009 confirmation hearing.

Kennedy’s website currently lists its support for the codification of the standard of Roe v. Wadestressing that he “served this country well for 50 years”.

“Mr. Kennedy supports the judicial principles underlying it. If the courts do not overturn Dobbs v. Jackson and restore the right to abortion, he will support legislation to accomplish the same thing,” adds Kennedy’s website. “The sovereignty of the body must be protected.”

While running for president, Kennedy said that it supports access to abortion in the first three months of pregnancy – far beyond the standards adopted in many Republican-led states and in Republican-sponsored federal legislation.

Former Vice President Mike Pence released a statement criticizing Kennedy’s nomination, saying:

I believe the nomination of RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary constitutes a stark departure from our administration’s pro-life record and should be of deep concern to the millions of pro-life Americans who support the Republican Party and our candidates for decades. .

Kennedy’s positions clearly don’t matter much to Trump either. The president went to great lengths to muddy the waters around his stance on abortion in the last election. And under his leadership, the GOP softened its long-standing position on abortion in the party platform this summer. Republicans greeted the change with mixed responses. At the time, Hawley called it “a mistake to walk away from the party’s long-standing pro-life commitment,” adding, “as a matter of principle, we are a pro-life party.” He doesn’t seem so worried now.

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Last week, Marc Caputo and I reported about Matt Gaetz’s sudden about-face to be nice to the Republican senators he despised during his career in Washington. Gaetz called senators to assess his chances of being confirmed as the next attorney general – and in some cases, he denies well-documented allegations that he had sexual relations with a minor during his first term in Congress.

Speaking to a group of reporters Monday evening, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) mentioned that he was one of the lawmakers Gaetz called.

Congressman Gaetz called me late the other night. He said, “Kennedy, I was nominated,” and of course I said, “Yeah, I heard that somewhere.” And he said, “Will I be fairly shaken?” I said, “Absolutely.” Just come to the Judiciary Committee, answer all the questions, tell everyone what your plans are and we’ll all take it from there. And that’s what’s going to happen and all this speculation about what would happen if it happened and what it didn’t happen is just pure speculation.

I asked Kennedy if the allegations of sex crimes and irregularities in the still-unreleased House Ethics Committee report came up during the phone call.

“No, we haven’t talked about it,” he said. “We just talked about the process.”

Several lawmakers explicitly said they wanted to see the ethics committee’s report or expressed confidence that the allegations would be available for review by the public and members of the Judiciary Committee. Kennedy is not one of them. He was on a private phone conversation with Gaetz and apparently didn’t even ask about allegations of rape by a man who could be the nation’s next top law enforcement official. This is an indifference strikingly at odds with his past positions. Kennedy once said he wanted an ethics investigation into harassment charges against Al Franken before determining whether to request the resignation of the senator at the time. He also demanded the resignation of the FDIC chairman amid reports that he failed to act on sexual misconduct within his agency.

Kennedy’s popular, quick-witted schtick appears to have evaporated when it comes to Matt Gaetz, which likely indicates which way he plans to vote.